Here there are Blueberries
The search for truth lies at the centre of Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich’s Pulitzer-nominated play, which follows archivists at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum as they study, dissect, and agonise over a mysterious photo album donated in 2007.
The images in the album show Nazis at Auschwitz not as overt monsters, but laughing, relaxing, and picnicking – the suggestion is that, in private, they were, unsettlingly, just like us. What follows is a forensic unpicking of history, as the archivists attempt to identify the faces in the photographs, grapple with the moral implications of exhibiting the album in a memorial museum, and reassess how we confront and interpret the legacy of the Nazis.
But, sitting in the audience, I can’t help but wonder: is a play the best place to hash all these big ideas out? Based on real-life events and told in documentary style, the narrative unravels like a puzzle being slowly put together. The facts are presented statically, in a new UK production also directed by Kaufman, but some of the much-needed momentum is lost along the way. Projected across the theatre’s back wall, the photographs function as visual evidence – figures are circled, details enlarged, and key faces isolated for scrutiny. Set primarily in the back room of a museum, with desks glowing under sterile light, the staging moves at the slow pace of a genuine investigation.
Perhaps that is the point. But after 90 minutes, the structure begins to wear thin. For much of the...